“Um, aye,” he said, scrambling for something to say that sounded reasonable. “Found it in the cellar.”
She looked at him in surprise. “Was there a barn here originally? I looked at your grandmother’s map while you were gone and wondered. If that’s the case, I’m guessing there might have been an arena once where your garden is now.”
Of course. He knew he shouldn’t have been surprised.
He didn’t argue when Léirsinn pulled out a chair and gave him a bit of a push down into it. She was, after all, rather strong for a wench.
He drank what she handed him which he found was water, not anything more useful. At the moment, he suspected anything that left him looking as if he were merely sitting in his kitchen for a decent chat before supper couldn’t be a bad thing. He sipped, nodded when he thought her conversation merited it, and tried not to look as blind-sided as he felt.
I’m watching you.
He almost snorted. Apparently that was the case and it left him wondering just how long that had been going on.
I’m watching her…
Acair heard something shatter. He realized as he looked down that it was his glass that was lying there in shards at his feet.
Shards. Ye gads, would the word never cease to torment him?
He thought he might understand how it felt to be kicked by a stallion. He couldn’t have lost his breath any more thoroughly or abruptly if he had been. He would have staggered, crediting the same to a little foray into his cook’s hidden bottle of sherry, but his recent encounter with fierce ocean winds had left him perfectly sober.
Frighteningly sober and apparently lacking in the good sense that grounded a black mage to his higher purpose of making life a misery for everyone he came into contact with.
What if that mage hadn’t been chasing him?
What if that mage had been after Léirsinn all along?
“Don’t move.”
He wasn’t sure he could. He sat there and watched stupidly as Léirsinn started to clean up the glass. He came back to himself as she reached for a particularly large, jagged piece, then sent the lot into oblivion with a quick and dirty spell. She blinked, sat back on her heels and looked up at him.
“Aren’t you handy,” she said slowly.
He could only look at her, mute. He rose, pulled her to her feet, then pasted on a smile.
“Would you do me a favor?”
“Of course.”
“Ah,” he said, casting about for something to say, “could you find me a bottle of wine? From the cellar?”
She looked at him as if he’d lost his wits. He understood. If he could have caught enough breath to agree with her, he would have.
“Anything special?” she asked.
“Whatever suits,” he said. “I left my boots at the front door. I need to go fetch them.”
He turned and walked away before he had to say anything else inane, realizing as he opened his front door a handful of moments later that he was already wearing his boots because he’d never taken them off to begin with.
He didn’t think, he simply walked down the pathway and through his spell.
He supposed he might later have the presence of mind to be relieved that his ever-present spell of death had detached itself from the spell protecting his home and come to stand next to him. That would no doubt be tempered by the knowledge that it was only standing so close because ’twas a bit easier to slay something if one had that something within arm’s reach.
The mage facing him, that rotund little man with the terrible power but so little imagination, merely stood there, a hundred paces away, doing nothing.
Saying nothing.
Simply watching.
“Acair?”
The mage turned his head sharply and looked in the direction of that voice.
Acair continued on with his newfound habit of not thinking. He merely stepped back inside his spell, ignoring the shrieking of his deathly shadow as it couldn’t follow him, and walked up to the front door. How he managed a smile he hoped was confident and unassuming, he wasn’t sure. Years of practice at theatrics, no doubt.
“Darling, ’tis cold outside,” he said, shooing Léirsinn inside and shutting the door behind them. If he locked it with a resounding click, so much the better.
“What were you—”
“Lost my spell there for a moment,” he said, lying with an abandon that might have almost rivaled his recent realizations for sheer awfulness. “A drink, love, don’t you think? Chilly out.”
She looked at him as if she’d never seen him before. He understood. He hardly recognized himself, either.
He found himself enormously grateful for a spell that covered his house with an imperviousness that even Sìle of Tòrr Dòrainn, an elf famous for his own spell covering his realm, might have given a brisk nod of approval to.
At least he hoped it was impervious.
He shook his head sharply. Of course it was. He had poured quite a bit of his own…
He indulged in an impolite epitaph or two and wondered when it was that he would stop encountering realizations that made him want to go have a little lie-down. He had poured a rather decent amount of his soul into his spell of protection because it had seemed like a reasonable use of what he had to hand. It also made it rather convenient, as he had so recently noted to himself, when it came time to pop in or out of his own dwelling. Just a bit of shorthand to keep himself from being crushed to death.
He found that he couldn’t speak and Léirsinn was kind enough not to force him to. She was also kind enough to hand him a glass of whisky when he collapsed into the chair in front of the fire in his study.
He couldn’t believe he hadn’t considered it before. A testament to his own arrogance, to be sure. Even Aonarach of Léige had needed to point out to him how unimportant he was in the grander scheme of things. He was tempted to wonder about that lad’s part in the whole damned play, but he dismissed that immediately. Aonarach was a youth and apparently fixated on the sister he thought Léirsinn might still have, not other, more unsettling matters.
“Did you find anything?”
Acair looked at the glorious woman he had considered naught but a simple stable lass and wondered what part she had to play in the madness.
Not that he couldn’t think of several decent reasons why someone would want her, but he was also hopelessly fond of her for reasons that had nothing to do with magic or shadows or draining the world of anything beautiful.
Why would a mage who made shadows with the express purpose of stealing souls want that lass there?